. >> rose: was that one of the failures of the obama administration not to deal with the housing crisis as part of the financial collapse. >> very much so but you have to remember he inherited the problem. bush hadn't even talked about it. obama said let's do something. but then what they proposed was simply inadequate. >> rose: was it because they focused on the financial sector at the exclusion of the housing issue? >> basically, basically. part of it was they were worried at the time that the kinds of things you needed to do. restructure the mortgage, write down the mortgages, would weaken the banking system. and they were more focused on helping the bankers than homeowners. you know, ode citizens. and i think that was a big mistake. >> rose: when you look at 2008 and the decisions made first by the bush administration, paulson, bernanke, geithner and later decisions by the president, summers and geithner and others or bernanke, were the right decisions at the time to deal with the financial crisis to avoid going over into some abyss? >> they prevented us from going into the abyss, i